Tomato Cain and Other Stories Page 5

  And I hear that audience laugh.

  END

  Chapter 6

  Lotus for Jamie

  Jamie wiped the home-made hair-cream from his fingers on to his soft brown beard, while sister Emily neatly arranged his parting.

  “Emily,” said Jamie.

  “Yes, dear,” said Emily.

  “I couldn’t sleep last night, Emily. I just lay quiet and there were little pains in my head, Emily. Why couldn’t I sleep?”

  “Your brain was upset, dear,” said Emily. “I think there are still one or two aspirins left and I would have given them to you if you had called me.”

  “Yes,” said Jamie, “I like to have an aspirin when iI can’t sleep. Because, after a while, I have lovely dreams, Emily.”

  “Do you, dear?” said Emily.

  She smiled with the little wise look in her eyes that came there when Jamie told about himself.

  “I see all sorts of exciting things, Emily. Like it says about in books. I do exciting things too, Emily. I do brave things. There’s people. There’s a man - a sort of little man. He’s got a beard like me. And he’s awful kind as well, Emily. But I’m stronger than he is.”

  “It’s all dreams, Jamie,” said Emily.

  “Sometimes we go hunting in the woods, Emily, and there’s big animals and things there, and then I’m frightened - a bit. But we always win, Emily.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Emily.

  When the postman came with a letter, Emily read it with tiny lines between her eyes and said, “I’ve got to go away for the day, Jamie. Uncle Jacob is very ill.”

  “Poor Uncle Jacob,” said Jamie.

  “I'll lay the table for your meals,”said Emily. “You must be quiet: and if I don’t come back early, go to bed at eight o’clock.”

  When she had gone, Jamie sat in the garden and looked at the pictures in his comics. He read one or two of the stories, but they were not so interesting as the pictures and took too long to make out.

  In the afternoon, when he had drunk his milk and eaten his salad, he sat in the sunny garden again and tried hard to think of the bearded dream-man. But he would not come into Jamie’s head, nor the wood with the strange animals.

  There was just the yellow hot field beyond the garden.

  Suddenly he had an idea.

  It was a clever idea, and Jamie smiled and pulled at his brown beard in pleasure. He found his black tin money-box with the slot to put pennies in. Once he had had one shaped like a dog, but Emily said that it was too silly for a man of forty.

  Jamie opened it with a stone and took the money in his big white hands. There were a number of pennies, and two bright shillings, and five half-crowns. He put the coppers in one pocket and the silver in another, and with his best hat in his hand, set off down the lane.

  He waited a long time at the place where the brown bus stopped. At last it came. It made a great noise, and for a moment Jamie was frightened.

  The conductor had a loud voice. “Don’t you want to get in?”

  Jamie took a seat at the front and his wide eyes watched trees and poles and houses fly by.

  Presently the conductor cam and Jamie gave him one of the pennies. The conductor winked at a man behind and said something Jamie did not understand, about “tip.”

  “It’s to pay for the bus,” said Jamie. “I’m going to town.”

  The conductor made a hissing laugh and began to explain in a slow, loud voice.

  At last Jamie gave him one of the shillings.

  All the people in the bus were laughing. A young woman with two ducks on her knee looked at him and said, “Ought not to be allowed on buses!” Jamie wondered if she meant the ducks.

  He put the pretty blue ticket carefully inside his hat-band, as Emily had once shown him.

  When they reached the town, he looked around anxiously, but he remembered to stay in his place until all the other people had left. Then he went too. Near the market-place he bought a cake; a pretty cake made of red and green stuff with cream on it. He ate it slowly and rapturously as he went towards the chemist’s.

  At this shop, he wiped his hands on his coat before remembering that he was not to do so. He took all the money in his sticky fingers, and tried to talk in the way Emily said was proper, because he was doing an important task.

  “I want aspirins,” he told the chemist, and added, “sir.”

  The man produced a very small bottle with a printed label. “I want a lot,” said Jamie. “Emily and me, we live a long way from places. I want them to last a long long time - sir.”

  The man brought two more bottles.

  “Another one as well,” said Jamie.

  That made four.

  “They’re bottles of fifty,” said the chemist.

  Jamie laid the half-crowns out on the counter and looked at the chemist. The man’s eyes closed a little, and his mouth quivered as if a smile was trying to come. He handed three of the coins back to Jamie, and also a shilling from a machine that rang.

  Jamie put the bottles in his pocket and left the shop, the coins clutched in his hand.

  His ears burned.

  He had forgotten to say “Thank you.”

  There were many people in the streets as he went to finish his shopping, and a great noise of talk and walking and cars and lorries. Jamie’s head jerked from side to side as he watched. He knew his mouth was open, and he shut it hard, as he had been told.

  A little girl who went by said, “That man’s got cream on his beard,” and Jamie wondered whom she meant.

  He could see no one with a beard.

  At the newspaper shop he spent a long time looking at the comics, until the shopkeeper asked him what he wanted. Then he took three of a kind of comic that had no stories and many pictures, and counted pennies into the man’s hand until he was satisfied.

  It was not until Jamie was in the brown bus again that he found the comics were all the same.

  At first he felt angry with the shopkeeper: then he tore two of them up and threw them under the seat.

  The conductor said “You back again, chum?” and made him buy another ticket before the bus started. “You wanted a return,” he said, and winked at the driver, who looked back from his seat like the funny horse in the comic, looking through a gate.

  Jamie did not understand, but he felt the pockets where the shining bottles were, to make sure they were safe, and looked at the pictures in his comic while the bus took him slowly home.

  When he looked up, still smiling at the funniness of the jokes, he did not know where they were, and a strange cold feeling came in his head, and his legs trembled.

  He say stiffly, with the comic in one hand and the hot half-crowns and the ticket in the other; he knew his mouth was open, and he looked out of the window, then across through the one opposite.

  At last the conductor came and patted his shoulder.

  “This is where you want to get off, chum,” he said, and giggled at the driver as the bus slowed down.

  Jamie climbed out of the bus and crossed the road.

  It was the right place.

  “Hi, you’ve forgotten something,” shouted the conductor.

  When Jamie went back, he handed him the torn-up comics. Jamie took them politely, and the half-crowns clattered on the ground from his open hand. The blue ticket floated into a pool of oil.

  The conductor was winking at an old man on the back seat as the bus rumbled on up the hill.

  Jamie found the money, and hurriedly hid the wasteful, torn papers in a deep briar patch.

  The precious aspirin bottles were safe.

  It was along walk home past Clew’s old empty farm and the waterfall and the three broken cottages. As Jamie went by the waterfall and smelt the warm wetness of the hedges that the high trees shaded, he saw something move in the long grass at the side of the road.

  A dark-coloured furry creature crept out and raised a pointed nose, sniffing blindly.

  Jamie stuffed the last comic in his
pocket with the aspirins, and picked the mole up. It did not struggle, and Jamie stroked its loose coat gently as he held it against his chest.

  Animals never ran away from him as they did from other people. “It must be because you’re sort of - special, Jamie, dear,” Emily had told him.

  When he reached home it was growing late and cool, for the bus ride had been a long one. He set the aspirins in a neat row on the table.

  “You’re my friend now,” he said to the mole.

  Its tiny black eyes winked, not like the bus conductor’s, but honestly.

  “You’re Mister Mole,” said Jamie.

  After supper he gathered the sleepy animal into his big hands and put it down on the foot of his bed. He bought a heavy blue-patterned jug of water to drink, and began to prepare for bed, for it was eight o’clock.

  Mister Mole yawned; his wet pink mouth shone in the darkness of his fur as Jamie patted him.

  Emily came back some time later.

  “Are you all right, dear?” she called softly, and when a sleepy voice answered, she opened the door of Jamie’s room. Seeing her, the mole scrambled clumsily down from the foot of the bed and crept into a corner.

  “Whatever’s that!” she said.

  Small empty bottles chinked on the bed as Jamie swallowed the last few of the two hundred aspirins, and lowered the jug.

  He looked up drowsily with eyes that were black slits.

  “Em’ly,” he said, “they'll last a nice long time. I do like dreams, Em’ly.”

  END

  Chapter 7

  Oh, Mirror, Mirror

  “The Old Queen possessed a wonderful mirror and when she stepped before it and said:

  ‘Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall,

  Who is the fairest one of all?’

  it replied:

  ‘Thou art the fairest, Lady Queen.’

  Then she was pleased.”

  “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, Grimm’s Fairy Tales

  There’s no call to start so, Judith. It’s only your auntie. Lie back in the bed now. Let me pull the covers round you against the draught. And a sip of water: your forehead’s hot.

  No, you’re wrong, dearest. It’s hot, not normal. So often that way; I don’t like it. Oh! You mustn’t listen when I say such things, talking to myself I’m such a silly; I meant nothing. Really - nothing. Yes, I know it feels cool to you, but then - never mind! Poor little Judy!

  I’m going to sit with you for a while. There! What jolly cane chairs you have in your room, haven’t you? I think they are two of the cosiest in the whole house. Age doesn't matter with really good articles, you know that. Don’t you? And fumbling repairs sometimes spoil things we’ve grown used to and fond of.

  Now, I want you to lie quite still and restful. I'm going to talk to you, dear.

  Yes, it’s about what happened yesterday afternoon.

  Won't you tell me why you did it, Judith? You may as well. Because I know, anyway; more than you do.

  No! No!

  Don’t hide your face like that! Oh, it hurts your auntie more than you can tell when her little girl won’t speak to her.

  Yesterday I was arranging her tea and wondering what would please her most. I had found a bright, clean napkin for her tray, and I was cutting bread thin as thin, and cornerwise, because that is how she likes it. And then I looked out of the window.

  What I saw upset me very much. It was my little girl running, wasn’t it? Running far down the garden to where the wall joins the big door. And peeping behind her to see if I watched. But I was behind the curtains.

  Then I felt something inside me. Here. A tight, cold feeling all round my heart.

  Because of two things. One was that she should go so terribly against my wishes. So many times I have said, since she was quite tiny, “You mustn't go outside the garden, Judith,” and “You ought never to run.” But there she was, in spite of all I had said and done for her. It made your auntie extremely unhappy, Judith.

  But the second reason was sadder still. As I ran out on to the lawn, I was saying to myself, “Now she will have to be told everything, and it may break her heart. Something wicked has made her do this, and she must know, so that she can resist it.” That's what I said to myself as I was running down the path. “She will have to be told,” I said.

  You weren’t able to go very fast, were you, clear? You are so young, and I am your old aunt, and yet I caught up with you among the pear trees. Was it really that you slipped upon the path? Or was it perhaps, something else?

  Now I want you to take another sip of water - there! Are you quite comfortable? You must be very brave. Give me your hand, dear. Such a frail little hand, tight in mine.

  Very brave indeed, Judith. I’ll have to tell you something that will be a very great shock. I’m going to be as gentle as I can, but it will still be a shock.

  Let me see. You remember that fairy tale from when you were very small - “The Ugly Duckling”? It looked so odd and different that the other ducks and everybody drove it away. And then it changed and grew into a beautiful swan. Do you know what “beautiful” is, Judy? You liked that story very much, though.

  Now, just think, dear. Supposing - just supposing that the duckling hadn't changed at all. Supposing it became a still uglier one? That wouldn't have made a happy ending, would it?

  Hold your auntie’s hand very tightly, my love, and try to be ever such a brave girl. You see, Judith, I’m afraid you’re that kind of duckling.

  There, there!

  Ever since you came here as a tiny tot with no mother and daddy, I’ve known some day I’d have to tell you that you were - different from other people.

  Now you’re understanding. Why nobody comes here. Why I have to have a high, safe wall round the garden - that you never go outside. And why your auntie takes such care of you, every minute of the day.

  I suppose you’ve often wondered why it was like that, haven’t you? But you’ve always been so good and done as auntie bid, and auntie loves you so very much.

  It would have been the same if your - parents had lived. Your lovely mamma would have done what I did; we understood each other so well, as sisters do. I knew everything she should have, every single thing that was best for her. And then she married your father - she had no right...

  We - we’ll not talk about that. It’s only what I said before. He wasn’t really for her. Not for her. That’s it, he wasn’t - good enough.

  And so, they’ve both gone a long time, and poor old auntie’s minding this little girl instead.

  And the little girl wants to know why she cannot go out and see the world at last. Because she’s grown to fifteen years old.

  Well now, just wait a minute.

  Here’s the mirror, down from its hook. I can rest it against the foot of the bed. Carefully does it when the frame is loose.

  Can you see into it, Judith? Raise yourself a little, dear. There. See the precious duckling clearly?

  This is the part that is going to hurt, even with her auntie’s arm tight round her.

  I want you to look at that shape in the mirror, Judy. Such a slender, curvy body, isn’t it? S o_soft and pale. Those swollen little breasts.

  Did you think that was right? Did you?

  Now look at me, dear. I’m not like that at all. See how strong and solid I am, straight everywhere, in every line? That’s the way people are, Judith. People outside.

  That little face of yours, Judy. Pale, nearly like the bed-sheets, except for two pinky cheeks and red lips. Eyes as blue as - copper rot. Mine are dark brown, and my skin is dark and tough. And hair - look in the mirror, dear; see that thin, soft, shiny yellow, like fading grass? Not thick and black, like other people’s.

  My little Judy - crying! Oh, what sobs!

  You just didn’t know how - different you were. I’ve always kept it from you. That is why there are no pictures of people in the rooms. I didn’t want you to be hurt.

  Brown skinned and hard, they are, with
strong black hair. I’m one of them.

  So I can go out and talk among them. And they don’t know about you, these dark people. Only I think of my little girl at home that’s different.

  Now, Judy, do you know what would have happened if your old auntie hadn’t cared for you yesterday, and run to stop you and guide you back to this house? Do you know what would have happened if you had gone past the pear trees and the green water tank, and up to the big door? And if it hadn't been locked - but it always is - and you had opened and walked outside?

  Something very horrible, Judith.

  You would have seen people like me - all like me, Judy - only not smiling, I’m afraid.

  You would have seen them halt in the distance, and point, and murmur to each other in their dry, grey roads; and move softly in the shadows. And presently, as you walked, you would hear tiny shufflings and mutterings. And you would glimpse a head of a person on the other side of a wall, keeping pace with you, or a grey hand signalling in a doorway. And then things would come quietly through the hot dust. They would be people. And they would be following you. Because you were different.

  Remember how all the animals were unkind to the Ugly Duckling? People can be far crueller.

  You might speak to one of them, but your voice would be tiny with fright. His head would turn away, with eyes remaining on you, and he would talk loudly and hard. Not to you - to the others. You would feel the whisper run through, sealing them against you, and teeth and eyes would shine out from the whole band of them. Then they would be thrusting, jostling, screaming, and all the roads clattering with laughter. “Look at the eyes!” they would shout. “See it! How it cries! There it is, running!” And the shouts would become the echo of your own feet beating along the middle of the lanes, and the stones ringing under them. Running until you couldn’t go any longer! And behind, they would be coming, closing on you!

  Like one of those dreams auntie calls nightmares, but this time it would be true, Judy. Perhaps in your dreams, you know.